So, my friend Amanda recently wrote an entry in her blog on myspace about whether or not she would erase memories of past experiences from her mind if it were possible, as it is in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I started writing a comment on her blog and then decided that the comment was getting long enough that I should just post it here. So, in order to understand what I’m talking about, you should give her post about this matter a read first.

Amanda, I agree with what you’ve said here, except for your sentence which reads, “Denying yourself experience is only a way of limiting yourself and your significance to life and the lives of those around you.” This idea, that the lack of an experience is somehow a limitation, works in the context of Eternal Sunshine because the lack of an experience is really a blank hole. There’s really nothing there. But, in the real world, the lack of an experience is replaced by, the experience of something else.

I don’t subscribe to the opinion that one has to do as many things as possible and experience as many different things as possible to avoid not missing out on anything. Yes, diversity of experience is important, but I’m never going to fly the space shuttle and I don’t have to do heroine or have a one night stand either. It just boils down to if you’re not doing one thing, you’re doing something else. And, who knows which thing is more enlightening or more important to your development as a peson.

So, would I erase portions of my memory? No. But, are there things that I wish hadn’t happened? Yes. There are choices that I made and there are experiences I have experienced that if I had the chance to do over again I would handle differently. I guess that is called regret. At some point the word ‘regret’ became a really bad word. That’s the perception I get from people in our generation at least. I could probably write a whole entry just about this, but I’ll cram it in to this one anyway. My rationale is that regret is natural. It’s not something that you really get to decide about after the fact. The idea that regret is a really bad thing seems to come up in the context of a few life experiences more often than with others. For example, if you don’t look both ways when crossing the street and you get hit by a car, you should regret not looking both ways. This example is obvious. But, if you go out drinking and do something “regrettable” with someone you don’t know / care to know, actually regretting it is seen as something to avoid. Entire songs have been written about this idea. I don’t follow this rationale. If you were put in the same situation, armed with all of the knowledge that you have now, would you do exactly the same thing? No? Well then welcome to regret. It’s not so bad now is it? With that said, I do think that getting all caught up in something from the past that you can’t change is unhealthy. But, that is different from regret in my eyes.

So, what the hell was I talking about? Right – erasing memory. So, like I said, in the real world if an experience is avoided, it’s replaced by another experience. Would I rather take this job or keep the one I have? Would I rather date this person or stay single? Would I rather go out and party all night or stay in and watch some movies? These are all common decisions that people make every day. But, who knows what might come of a job that you currently have if business starts booming; who knows what might happen if you’re single rather than in a relationship; and who knows what might happen if you stay home and watch movies? You just might write a blog entry about it that spurs a discussion.

I have this tendency to discuss things to death. Hopefully I’ve avoided that and have actually gotten a point across.

So, I decided that I wanted to know what was going in to Iraq’s constitution. I guess I’m some kind of a constitution junky (if that’s at all possible). Regardless of my reasons I set out to read the proposed Iraqi constitution. I found a copy of it that was translated by the Associated Press. It’s only 25 pages long, so it’s an easy read if you want to play the home game. I figured I would give my little commentary on the whole thing so I don’t feel like I’m just doing this for myself.

So, there’s this whole introduction that basically gives a history of Iraq’s trials, tribulations, and successes. My favorite line from this part, “We the sons of Mesopotamia, … the creators of the alphabet”. Yeah that’s right – they brag about how they created the alphabet in the first sentence of their constitution. How ballsy is that? After the introduction they start getting in to the meat of the thing.

Article I basically just declares that Iraq is a soveriegn democratic nation. Fair enough. But, it gets good in article II. “Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation: No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.” Well there you go. I mean, I know they take their religion seriously over there, and that’s all well and good. But, why does it have to permeate its way into their government? There are people in the US who would do the same thing here given the chance. I just don’t know why the two are so related. Practice your religion any way you like before you leave the house, but please don’t gunk up my government with it.

Article IV declares that Arabic and Kurdish are the two official languages of Iraq. I’m not terribly sure why the government gets involved in this either. The US is doing just fine without an official language. People complain that Spanish speaking people should have to learn English when they move to America, but that’s just racism at its heart. The market will force people to learn English where necessary (as it does already).

Article VII contains all of the bits where Iraq denounces terrorism. I suppose that was to be expected, but it feels more like United States propoganda than anything else. “Entities or trends that advocate, instigate, justify or propagate racism [or] terrorism … are banned.” This seems like it would violate any sort of freedom of speech (which I haven’t found in the constitution yet), but we all have our priorities, right?

Article IX-b declares militias that are not part of the official armed forces to be illegal. I mention it only because it differs with the US. I guess that’s really my main goal here – I want to figure out how different their government is from ours. Article IX-e reads as follows, “The Iraqi government shall respect and implement Iraq’s international commitments regarding the non-proliferation, non-development, non-production, and non-use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Associated equipment, material, technologies, and communications systems for use in the development, manufacture, production, and use of such weapons shall be banned.” Again, it seems a little weird for this to be in a constitution. Would the US agree to an amendment that made it illegal for our government to have nuclear weapons? Oh, and Article XI just declares that Baghdad is the capital city – kind of silly.

Chapter 2 of the constitution is titled “Rights and Freedoms”, so this is where it should get good. The first line of this chapter reads, “Iraqis are equal before the law without discrimination because of sex, ethnicity, nationality, origin, color, religion, sect, belief, opinion or social or economic status.” Well played Iraq. I dig it. Heck, here’s a right that we don’t even have in the United States, “Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality.” Yeah, we don’t actually have an explicit right to privacy in the United States. You have to combine something like 3 different clauses in the constitution in order to find something like it. This would be a constitutional amendment I could get behind. But of course, the decision in Roe v. Wade was based on this weak right to privacy. Strengthening the right to privacy would only strengthen the grounds on which Roe v. Wade was decideed, so we’ll never actually see that happen in this country.

An Iraqi citizen is defined as anyone who is born to an Iraqi mother or an Iraqi father. So, it doesn’t matter where you are born geographically. I think that’s pretty cool. It has an air of inclusion. Iraq has an independent judiciary whose only superior is the law and the constitution. Every Iraqi is also guaranteed a trial by jury. This all seems to be pretty good.

Article XXII is a little weird in that it reads, “Work is a right for all Iraqis in a way that guarantees them a good life.” Once again, kind of weird to see that in a constitution, but whatever. I’ve never written a constitution after all. Article XXX is pretty interesting – “The state guarantees social and health insurance.” Yep – that’s right. I’m not even going to go into it.

I’m starting to wonder how different our constitution would be if it were written today rather than nearly 250 years ago. Article XXXIII – “Every individual has the right to live in a correct environmental atmosphere. The state guarantees protection and preservation of the environment and biological diversity.”

Well, Article XXXVI contains what I think is their right to free speech. But, they buggered it up pretty well, “The state guarantees, as long as it does not violate public order and morality: 1st – the freedom of expressing opinion by all means. 2nd – the freedom of press, publishing, media and distribution. 3rd – freedom of assembly and peaceful protest will be organized by law.” How necessary is the “as long as it does not violate public order and morality” loophole. They couldn’t get by without that part? That basically means, “You can say whatever you want as long as we like it.” That’s a pretty bogus freedom of speech if you ask me. I mean, I guess it’s better than what they had before, but how much better?

The next few pages of the constitution define their legislative branch. It’s kind of weird because they say that it is made up of the Council of Representatives and the Council of Union. Then, they go on and on about what the Council of Representatives is and what they’re responsible and capable of doing, but all they say about the Council of Union is, “The makeup of the council, the conditions for membership and all things related to it will be organized by law.” Oh well good.

The president of Iraq is not elected directly by the people but by a 2/3 majority vote in the Council of Representatives. I’m not sure how they expect to get a 2/3 majority vote for a president, but that’s what it says. We don’t actually have the right to a direct vote for president in the state’s either, but we at least make it look that way. :o) It seems that the Iraqi president doesn’t actually have that much power anyway. He is basically a puppet for the Council of Representatives. The real power seems to be in the hands of the prime minister, which oddly enough seems to be appointed by the president.

They then get in to defining the judicial branch. The supreme court has the responsibility of declaring if a law is constitutional or not before it is enacted. That’s kind of weird isn’t it? They also seem to be able to decide if a law is constitutional after the fact like our supreme court can, which is nice.

Article 109 reads as follows, “Oil and gas is the property of all the Iraqi people in all the
regions and provinces.” Yep – that’s the whole thing. That’s all they had to say about it.

They then go ahead and describe how Regions are defined, which are just like our states. I skimmed through that part and the only interesting thing is that they seem to establish state rights by saying that whatever is not defined by the federal government will be controlled by the states and that the state’s laws take precedence.

The last part just defines little tidbits like how the constitution is amended and how things should work while they transition to this style of government. Overall I think the constitution is nice. I don’t particularly like their freedom of speech, but I guess it is what was expected. Hopefully the Iraqis will be able to enjoy the freedoms that are expressed in this constitution. That’s the real test I suppose – if they can actually enact this document into a working government.

Hopefully I provided a terse summary of the Iraqi constitution. I found myself interested so maybe someone else was as well. There ya go.

Jen breaking in to Amanda’s house before we went out dancing.

“You said you’ve never felt this way, at least not this early.
We decide to hold nothing back – we’ll act how we want to act.”
– The Good Life – Under a Honeymoon

I haven’t written anything in here in a long time and that is a sad thing. There is big news in Mark-land however, so here goes.

It was a few weeks ago and I had brought my usual boring Lean Cuisine lunch to work, but I wasn’t really in the mood to choke it down. I started a campaign of sorts to get my coworkers to go to Quizno’s to get the Alyssa Milano Sandwich. Tom, being the stubborn prick that he is, insisted that we go to Taco Bell instead. I agreed and off we were. We get to Taco Bell and we place our orders. Who comes walking through the doors of Taco Bell? Jen Sosna. That’s right. The same Jen Sosna that I was looking to get in touch with back in March. So, we have this odd conversation in the middle of a Taco Bell for a few minutes and we exchange phone numbers. I gave her a call a few days later and we made plans to go out for dinner. We’ve been dating ever since. Everything is going really well. We took the Cross Sound Ferry over to Connecticut for her birthday. We ate at Mystic Pizza and visited the Mysitc Aquarium. The ferry ride back was really nice because it was very dark and peaceful out on the Sound. So, things are going well in this department. We’re both very excited about what the coming months will bring.

I ran the Cow Harbor 10K Race this morning. I completed the race in 54:07.8. 10 Kilometers is a little over 6 miles. So, I averaged 8:43 a mile over 6 miles. I’m pretty happy with my performance, but I’m really just psyched that I finished without passing out. It’s a big deal for me to be able to complete a race like this. I felt like I was getting soft in my old age. The town of Northport is really nice. A bunch of the families who lived along the race route were outside with cups of water and yelling words of encouragement. Some of the kids were out at the curb spraying hoses and I was very appreciative. There’s a 5K race coming up that I’m thinking about running in also. We’ll see. That’s all for now.

The mp3 player that I have is the Rio Karma. I really really like it. The main reason that I chose this one over the plethora of other choices is that this one plays Ogg Vorbis files. Ogg Vorbis is a royalty-free music compression format that is not patent-encumbered and is of higher quality than mp3. All told, it is the shizzy. So, I had this Rio and everything was going well. Then the other day I dropped it … twice. The volume up button stopped working. So, I decided to open it up to try and fix it. This was not the best idea as now it doesn’t turn on. Well, it powers up and things start happening, but the drive makes this clicking noise and it never finishes starting. After this unfortunate turn of events I got a little more aggressive with my screwdriver. Here’s the result. I am fairly dependent on a player that plays Ogg Vorbis files. I don’t think this is really that bad. I did paint myself into a corner by ripping all of my music to a format that is not supported by every device under the sun, but I painted myself into a corner that I believe in, so it’s cool. It’s a cozy little corner and it’s mine. A reasonable person would look for a new Rio or some other music player and just move on. However, I’ve decided that it’s better to bid on other broken Rios on ebay that just happen to be broken in a different way (broken screen or controls) and to combine it with mine to make some kind of franken-rio that can never be defeated – not by monsters or gravity. We’ll see how it goes.

The ‘I am the Avalanche’ show is tomorrow. ‘I am the Avalanche’ is a band fronted by the lead-singer of The Movielife. That’s pretty much enough to mean that it’s going to kick my ass. Check out the two tracks they have on their webpage or pickup the split-EP they have out. It’s good.

The LILUG picnic that has been dubbed “The Gaggle of Geeks” is this weekend. I just sent out an email with all of the information in it. That should be a blast. That’s all for now.

“If I were sand, and you were oceans, the moon would be why you’re pulled to me.” — Armor for Sleep – Dream to Make Believe

I have to say how I feel about the recent rating-change of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For some background information you can read this story on MSNBC. The problem at hand is that Rockstar Games, the company which developed GTA, included some sexually explicit material on the game’s disc, but it is entirely inaccessible until a complicated modification is done to the game. Since the content was inaccessible, they didn’t report it to the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board). Someone created what is called the ‘Hot Coffee’ mod that makes this content accessible. Once news got out that this mod had unlocked this content in the game the ESRB investigated it and decided to change GTA’s rating from ‘Mature’ to ‘Adults Only’.

<rant>This is pretty ridiculous. The whole point of GTA is to run around stealing cars, shooting innocent pedestrians and police officers in the face, stealing all kinds of things, etc. Basically, it is a pretty messed up game. Hell, you can even hire a prostitute, have sex with her, and kill her afterwards and take your money back. Fuck, you can kill her by stomping her to death, running a chainsaw through her, lighting her on fire, or just by running her over a few times with your choice of vehicle. But, you never see any nipple. I’m convinced that that is pretty much what we (and by ‘we’ I mean the public of the United States, whom I’m less and less impressed with every day) has a big problem with. I wish I could get a sky-writing plane to write “Your kids won’t get fucked up if they see nipples.” across the sky. As far as I know we have no proof to suggest that kids who see more nipples are more likely to become criminals, rapists, pedophiles, or smut peddlers. If anyone can find such a study, please add a comment and link to it. I just think it’s absurd that we think that nipples are worse than setting people on fire and listening to them scream. This blog posting is a pretty funny take on the whole thing.</rant>

Oh, here’s a quote from that MSNBC article, “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was last year’s top console game, selling more than 5.1 million copies in the U.S. after its October release, according to market analyst NPD Group.”.
That’s right. They released it in October and it was last years top selling console game. This should be a stellar example of what kind of media we want to consume. We want to be able to do all of these things and more because it is entertaining and fun. I honestly don’t believe that violent and/or sexually explicit video games are bad for children. I have no empirical proof to back that up with, but I haven’t seen any proof saying the opposite either. Besides, such a study would have to show that a child that ends up messed up was actually messed up by the video games that he played and not by absent minded parents or other such problems (which may or may not be the reason for him being able to play such games).

So, I’m not exactly sure how to deal with the bastard mood that I’m in. I’ve just been very short with people lately. I went off on the news media again the other night. I think it’s easier for people to hear me say that I don’t care about Terri Schiavo now because she’s dead. When I say that I don’t care that Natalee Holloway is missing in Aruba or that I don’t care that people are getting eaten by sharks they get upset with me. I mean, it’s not like I’m related to anyone that is missing or getting eaten. It’s not even like I know someone who knows someone who is related to someone that is missing or getting eaten. I do feel bad for these people’s families and I do feel bad for those who are missing or were eaten, but it doesn’t need to be on the TV all day. If you look at it one way, it’s pretty sick. The media outlets are only talking about it because they want to sell you newspapers or whatever. They know that you’re going to buy their newspapers or watch their news reports because we actually find this stuff interesting. We are actually entertained when they interview the parents of this poor girl that’s missing in Aruba. And you know what we’re all thinking? We’re thinking, “I wonder how the parents are involved in this thing. I bet the dad had his daughter killed because she found out about he was cheating on mommy.” And you know what? If we found out that that is what really happened, then put it on the news for a few minutes because that’s a good story. There are probably hundreds of different people missing all over America right now, but we’re all supposed to care about this one girl?

Anyway – you probably understand now that I’m in a bastard mood. All of these little things that bothered me before now bother me much more. Well, I guess they don’t bother me any more than they did, but I feel more inclined to talk about how they bother me. I mentioned this to my mom and she said, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” While I think that is sound advice, I feel like all of these small things are ruining everything. For some reason I feel like if the news wasn’t filled with shit like this that it would be showing things that actually might affect those people who are watching it. You know, something educational or revealing; something that gave the citizens of this country more to go on than what letter comes after a politician’s name.

I think I need to take a nap or something. Oh, Jeff is going to swing by my house tomorrow and we’re going to try and do some work on Office Bocce. That should be fun. Also, my work on creating RPMs of Gnome through JHBuild is coming along. It’s not done yet, but I’m getting packages out. I basically just have to figure out what else to do to get all of the packages to install. We’ll see how it goes.

So, I got back from Germany on June 1st and I’m just now getting around to writing about it. I really should have written about it earlier because it would have been easier to remember the details. Regardless, here it goes.

I’ve already written about the plane ride over to Germany and a few other things. So, I suppose I’ll start this list of highlights from when I got off the train. It took me about 45 minutes to find my hotel once I stepped out of the train station. However, the hotel is 5 minutes away from the train station. If I knew where to look I could see it from one of the train station doors. Here’s a picture from the balcony my hotel had in which you can see the train station. The hotel room was pretty nice. The see-through doors in the bathroom were a little weird. So was the toilet with two buttons. I spent the first day tooling around Stuttgart. I enjoyed my first German meal which was a falafal sandwich and chicken wings. I spent a lot of time in the Schlossgarten. It was really great to see how German people live day-to-day. You can’t see that in a museum. I watched some guys play real bocce.

I went to Heidelberg the second day. I wrote about this in a previous post, but I have pictures now. I have one of me walking around Heidelberg with a lemon ice. Once I made my way up to the castle, I was able to take this picture of part of Heidelberg and this picture of part of the castle. There was much more to the castle as you can see in this picture I took from the Philosopher’s Walk.

The third day was when we took the trip to the medieval city of Esslingen. I didn’t take many pictures and the ones I took didn’t come out very well. The fourth day marked the beginning of the GUADEC conference. The conference was really awesome. It really motivated me to get more involved in Gnome. Jeff Waugh gave a talk about trying to get 10% of the desktops in the world running Gnome by 2010. He called it “10×10″. I saw John and met some other people as well. We played some giant chess while John hacked on DBUS.

I left the morning after the conference ended. I had a great time and it was really cool to be so far out of my element. Guadec 7 is going to be in Barcelona. We’ll see where things are a year from now, but I would really like to get out to Guadec again. The Gnome Summit is in Boston this fall and I will most likely be attending that as well. I suppose that about wraps up my post about Germany. All of the pictures that I took and deemed were of good enough quality and relevance are available on my flickr account and are tagged with Germany.